Tuesday, December 16, 2008

especially if you taught them using emacs

Today I received an email where the sig was very amusing:

If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day;
if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.
--- Anonymous

I showed it to my programmer friend, and we both fell about laughing.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

That was funny... But I am frustrated with Microsoft programs and OS's more than just the first day I use them ...

Anonymous said...

Pshaw. Emacs is awesome.

(and if "eight megs and constantly swapping" still amuses you, let's remember modern desktop PCs have a gigabyte or more of memory.)

Editor wars aside... as cute as the quip is, many non-technical people are constantly, constantly frustrated by software and hardware. I think anyone remotely responsible for anything an end user will interact with ought to read Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things".

Steve said...

eMacs rocks - and all programmers are artists at heart, no? Soulful, creative, deeply passionate about the end-user experience, tortured by constantly changing marketing requirements...

Anonymous said...

Chu: I do UIs, just UIs... just application design, just UIs...

Batty: Chu, if only you could see what I've seen with your UIs...


application.exe has encountered a problem and needs to clo*%76_* (&8jkhjk=..,* &u__

*** TRIPLE FAULT - REBOOT ***

[the modern version of a NO CARRIER joke]

Anonymous said...

May you and Tom have an awesome New Year, filled with bizarre foods and quirky brother-sister hijinks. :)

Best Wishes,
Anonymous

Unknown said...

Hello, Niniane Wang, I'm a boy from China, I have some problems working in Flex with model animation import, and now I'm developing a virtual community like lively, cam you tell me your email after you read this message?
For my email is xjdecember@163.com
3Q!

Unknown said...

And if you teach them how to program in Assembly, you will frustate them for 10 lifetimes... at least!
What if you teach them to program in Assembly using emacs? :-)

Best wishes.
Sofiane